Japanese Paper Toys and Airplanes For All Seasons

Sometimes don’t you think it would be interesting for children to live back in simpler times before all the current technology.  That they could entertain themselves and have fun without a screen in front of them?  Paper toys can do just that!  What are paper toys?  Let’s find out…

Tuttle Publishing surprised us with two very cool items! The first was a box of Japanese Paper Toys that contains 21 fun projects for kids of all ages.

Tristan and Kallista have been having a blast with this kit! (This post contains affiliate links)  They’ve been working on some of the projects over the past while when they are looking for something a little out of the ordinary.  These projects are unique and are absolutely perfect for packing up in a day-pack or carry-on for fun on-the-go or while at the cabin or passing time in a hotel room.

We haven’t completed all of the projects, but I am happy to show you a couple of the games the kids have done.  The crab in the photo above is meant to walk down a slope, but unfortunately Tristan and I must have made a fold not-quite-even as we can’t get it to crawl, but it’s such a cute little critter, regardless.  When he puts together one of the other moving projects, we’ll let you know!

Now on to the main events, here’s a fun paper horse race.  The directions do state to glue the legs onto the horses, but we haven’t done that so that we can lie them flat in the box for storage and reassemble them for play.

Next up is a video of my children having a sumo wrestling match.  They also explain how the set-up works.  For your convenience, I’ve cut out some bouts in which there were ties.

And finally from the Japanese Paper Toys kit, here’s a quick boat race for you:

As you can tell, my children had so much fun playing these games together for the umpteenth time!  That’s always a great sign of a quality product.  One of the other projects is a balancing character on a stand that I think will be great after I take the kids to try out a circus school class to see what they think of it.

I promised you some airplanes….and here they are!  The Supercool Paper Airplanes Kit: 12 Pop-Out Paper Airplanes; Assembled in About a Minute is just what it says it is.  You simply read the general directions at the beginning of the book, choose the plane you’d like to make, punch it out and put it together.  Tristan did his so quickly that he was done before I’d had a chance to snap a photo of him.  Kallista needed just a little help, but as you can see, she did most of it on her own.

We managed to find a relatively calm hour in the back garden for the kids to try out their planes.  They were quite entertaining for our next door neighbour who was doing some work behind the fence.

We’ll all admit that Tristan still needs a little work on his use of the included launcher, but he’s catching on.  He will only bring it out when Phil is at work as Phil has been known to have airplanes land on the neighbour’s roof (on more than one occasion), as well as sending stomp rockets across the open-plan office.  So I can understand Tristan’s concern!

We have a big storm approaching this weekend so we’ll not get a chance to get outdoors to play, but the children have lots to keep them busy indoors.  You may have heard them counting in Japanese in the videos…check back with us in the New Year to see what they’re using to learn it.

If you’d like to know more or would like to follow Tuttle Publishing, you can connect  with them through their website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest (and you can see our other Tuttle reviews here).

If you’re interested in purchasing these kits or other origami kits, here are some Amazon links for you: